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About Strigamia maritima

Strigamia maritima is a coastal European centipede of the Geophilimorph order. Like all centipedes, it is predatory, using venomous forcipules (legs adapted into pincers) to eat worms and small marine invertebrates that have been washed onshore. S. maritima is an eyeless species, using antennae to hunt, and specimens have around 49 pairs of legs; the exact number of segments depends on both genetic and environmental factors, and varies on a latitudinal cline [1]. The variablility in segment number (some centipede species always have the same number of segments) makes S. maritima a useful model for arthropod development [2, 3].

S. maritima is the first myriapod genome to be sequenced, which makes it an interesting species in phylogenetic terms. The placement of myriapods (centipedes, millipedes and similar species) on the tree of life has been a subject of some debate, but a recent study [4] has myriapods as a sister group to pancrustacea (insects and crustaceans), with chelicerates (such as ticks and spiders) as an outgroup. Centipedes have a simple, possibly ancestral, bodyplan, so the genome sequence of S. maritima is an important reference for arthropod comparative genomics.